HomeLet urges landlords to ensure their gas appliances

Blue Watch, a new home safety scheme set up by the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA) and supported by UK fire and rescue services has launched, following new research revealing that landlords aren’t doing as much as they could to keep their tenants and properties safe from fire and carbon monoxide.

The research, conducted among 1,500 landlords and 1,600 renters across the UK, found that one in five (21%) landlords never worry about making sure their tenants are safe, yet nearly one in 10 (8%) renters - the equivalent of around 1.73 million renters in England – claim they’ve had a gas leak or fire incident in their home.

Many landlords manage their rental property themselves, yet one in three (34%) landlords admit they never worry about whether they’re compliant with all the legal requirements for rental properties. Only a third (37%) of landlords have a carbon monoxide alarm fitted in their rental property and eight in 10 (82%) have a smoke alarm fitted.

With Gas Safety Week fast approaching on September 16th-22nd, HomeLet is urging all landlords to ensure their gas appliances are safe. Gary Abrahams, Sales and Marketing Director at HomeLet says, “These figures are really quite shocking. All landlords must, by law, make sure gas appliances in their rental properties are maintained, have a gas safety check carried out every 12 months by a registered Gas Safe engineer and give tenants a copy of the current Landlord Gas Safety Record.”

Gary Abrahams continues, “We here at HomeLet urge every landlord to check they have a Current Gas Safety Certificate for the gas appliances in all of their properties. If landlords don’t ensure their gas appliances are safe, they could end up with up to a £20,000 fine, imprisonment, harm their tenant’s health or even potentially kill them through Carbon Monoxide poisoning”.

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HomeLet is a leading supplier of Landlord Insurance, Tenant Referencing and Tenant Insurance. HomeLet is a trading name of Barbon Insurance Group Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for insurance mediation.
Registered in England number 3135797. Registered office address: Hestia House,Unit 2 Edgewest Road,Lincoln LN6 7EL.